


Winning the War

by letsprayitwritesitself



Category: Newsies - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 13:00:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10514271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letsprayitwritesitself/pseuds/letsprayitwritesitself
Summary: Written for a request for angsty Javid on tumblr. Jack kisses Katherine when they win the battle because, of course he does, but no-one else knows what had been going on between him and Davey earlier that same day.





	

He slid down the wall until he was crouching and then leaned forward, resting his forehead on his knees. He was sure he was going to throw up. He was either hallucinating, having an extremely vivid nightmare, or his friends were playing a prank on him - that, or he had actually seen his Jack kissing Katherine.

The cheer that had exploded from the guys when he kissed her expanded and distorted into a roar that Davey couldn’t scrape out of his head. He tried pressing his hands over his ears, singing loudly inside his head, anything, but it was there, accompanying the image that was scalded onto his consciousness. In an attempt to convince himself that he hadn’t imagined it, that he wasn’t pulling him and Jack out of thin air, he forced himself back to that morning, when he and Jack had -

It was when the rest of the kids were going wild, spreading the banner around town. Jack and Davey had done their share, scattering the news all over, sharing a triumphant grin once Jack had handed over his last copy to some teenager wandering out of a factory. The sun was almost done rising, they had barely slept, and both were high as a kite.

‘Time to go see if word’s reached the big man?’ Davey had nodded towards uptown, knowing that all this effort had been geared towards Jack being able to laugh in Pulitzer’s face. Jack nodded, then shook his head.

‘Yeah. No. Not yet.’ He looked a little frantic, unnerved. He grabbed a handful of Davey’s shirt - why was he always doing that? Couldn’t just say _follow me_ like a normal person - and dragged him down the nearest alley. The factory walls loomed, blocking out most of the natural light, and Jack deposited Davey in a kind of cubby formed from discarded crates. ‘Listen up. I feel like - I need to… Say sorry. For before. For taking the money.’

‘Jack, it’s fine. We knew that you -’

‘No, Dave. I was really gonna go.’ He kicked at the gravel on the ground. ‘I guess I thought I could just shrug this thing off.’

‘This thing?’

‘The strike. The guys. You.’ He looked up. ‘And Les. And Kath.’

‘Right.’ Davey pretended that he hadn’t just believed Jack was going to say something that implicated the two of them as a… never mind. ‘But you couldn’t do it?’

‘I guess I forgot how - this whole thing is bigger than me. It was, I remembered your pop. That kind of brung it back home for me.’

‘It’s bigger than all of us. Especially now.’

‘Exactly! And I just. I’m really sorry.’

‘Hey. Honestly, Jack, it was almost worth you leaving, just to see you come back, you know?’ Davey smiled at him. Jack nodded, and suddenly stopped fidgeting. Fuck it.

‘Dave, it was also - cuz… You got under my skin, there.’ There it was again. That almost-atmosphere, the one that descended whenever they accidentally made prolonged eye contact, or had a really impassioned discussion. That kind of mood that reminded them how on the same wavelength they were, how much they understood each other. Davey swallowed and stood up a little straighter, giving back Jack’s stare as good as he got. He didn’t know if he could say something, could acknowledge this, without risking a punch in the face. He was almost certain that he wasn’t making this up. But there was that little bit of doubt.

He thanked the heavens when Jack took a tiny step towards him. He was already backed up against the wall so the ball was completely in Jack’s court.

‘Dave.’ It was a near whisper. He reached out and placed his hand flat on the wall next to Davey. ‘Tell me to stop.’ Slowly, painfully slowly, he took another step so his whole body was aligned with Davey, inches away, any illusions about his intentions utterly transparent. When he placed his other hand on the wall, boxing him in, completely entering his personal space, it was Davey who leaned forward and pressed their lips together. 

This hadn’t come from nowhere but it was still a gorgeous surprise - Davey wasn’t exactly used to getting what he wanted. When he had those first stirrings of god-awful wrong thoughts about Jack, he’d tried hard to quell them, yet Jack had always supplied him with just enough physical contact and meaningful looks that the flame was never truly extinguished. This flame was up in full force now, and when their lips met, it compelled Davey to pull Jack in by his collar and grab his waist tight.

Like a dam broken they easily spent the next forty minutes in that alley, hands roaming, teeth clashing, breathless voices exchanging moans of names and expletives. Davey had never done this, any of this, before, and spent the whole time trying to ground himself, aware of how he was floating ten feet in the air, trying his best to memorise the way Jack’s lips felt on his own, on his neck, his jaw - they felt like a whole lot of too-good-to-be-true, and in the tradition of a kid who hadn’t grown up with a lot, he needed to make the most of it while he had it.

For Jack it had all fallen into place - he knew that the narrative of the strike was leading towards him and Katherine. And he liked her a lot. But how was he supposed to complete that arc when he had this damn kid standing in front of him, this wallflower who had basically managed to get an entire city on strike by accident? This raven-haired, hazel-eyed, lanky son-of-a-bitch who had noticed, just as Jack had, that sometimes when you thought you’d made a friend, or a selling partner, you’d actually stumbled upon something a lot better.

With a quiet smack they parted, resting their foreheads together, grinning like crazy, hot all over. Davey spoke first.

‘Jack, the thing - the thing is still happening. The. The strike.’

‘I know. I know.’ He pressed another kiss to Davey’s lips. ‘How long we been here?’ 

‘Days.’

Jack stepped away, and they both started trying their best to right their appearances, straightening collars, tucking shirts back in, though it wasn’t so easy to get rid of the blushes painting their cheeks. ‘We’ll come back to this later, alright?’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

And then Pulitzer’s office. Then Roosevelt. And even more exhilaration piling on top as they actually won the god damn war, and - Jack planting one on Katherine in front of the entire city. And Davey knew, or he would see later on, how conspicuously devastated he must have looked, backing away slowly when it had happened, ducking round the side of a random apartment building for a quiet breakdown. He could see how, for someone less invested in the outcome of their relationship than he was (so, all of the newsies, all the adults, everyone else in the god damn world) how satisfying it must be to see the hero of the hour matched up with the beautiful heroine, but - but it wasn’t fair. It was wrong. They hadn’t seen, didn’t know - and couldn’t know, that was the kicker. They could never know how there was something way heavier, way more real, going on between Jack and Davey. He may be infatuated but he didn’t have any illusions about whether or not he and Jack were about to embark on the public love story of the century. All the same - Jack had _promised,_ he’d said that they would - that they could…

He couldn’t cry. That was one thing he god damn couldn’t do. Collapsing in on himself like this in public was bad enough, but he could kid himself that this was an almost-rational reaction to the noise or the emotional exhaustion of the strike. If he cried, that was a whole different thing, and if he was caught crying? Oh boy.

He decided to let himself wait until the sinking sensation in his stomach had dissipated. He waited, and waited, and waited. The noise of the crowd got dimmer and dimmer. He sat on the ground, back against the wall, staring up at the block of sky he could see. He’d have to get back out there eventually.

He heard the footsteps first, then a soft voice. 

‘Dave.’

And all the anxiety he’d managed to force away came back in excess. This was dumb. They’d had, like, an hour of passion. That was it. Why was he getting so emotional about it? 

(Maybe, he argued with himself, cause that one hour had come from a validation of days full of wondering if their connection was a connection, and an affirmation that Jack noticed him, and saw him, and liked him.) 

Jack walked over and sat next to him, hip to hip. Davey forced himself to smile.

‘Hey.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You got nothin’ to be sorry for.’

‘C’mon, Dave. I see you.’

‘Can you blame me?’

‘No - it was a dumb, spur of the moment thing.’

‘We shouldn’t have done that, earlier -’

‘Why not?’

‘Cause you and Katherine, you make sense, we’re just…’

‘You don’t think you and I make sense?’ Jack nudged Davey’s shoulder with his own. 

‘It doesn’t matter. You just kissed her in front of everyone we know.’

‘I know. It just felt -’

‘Right?’

‘No! It felt like what I was supposed to do, alright? God damn it, I wish I hadn’t.’

‘I wish you hadn’t.’

Jack heaved a deep sigh. He could have just not kissed her. But she was there, and they’d won, and she was a girl, and he was the leader, and…

‘I still like you the best, Davey.’

‘It doesn’t matter! Look, we can’t… do anything, or be anything. You might as well just do what you have to.’ Davey started to let the anger in his stomach well up. It was better than feeling sorry for himself. 

‘You really saying we can’t be anything? Were you even there, in that alley this morning? Cuz it sure felt like we were on to something.’

‘You know what I mean, Jack! I mean that you should be with her, because that’s what’s right, and that’s what makes sense, and I’ll just be alone.’

‘You’re not alone, Dave. I’m not gonna let you be alone.’

‘Well, maybe not everything is up to you.’ Davey started to get up, but before he could stand Jack pulled him down by his hand, a sharp tug that saw Davey land on top of him. His knee scraped painfully on the ground but he took no notice, because Jack had leaned up so their lips crashed together. 

For a few seconds Davey let himself relive their earlier dalliance, stroking a thumb over the rough stubble on Jack’s cheek, noticing the way Jack’s mouth fit his, how tight Jack was gripping his hand, but once those few seconds were up he forced himself away, glaring at Jack as he stood up and brushed himself off. Jack, wide-eyed, breathing hard, looked utterly tempting, but Davey couldn’t get rid of that image of him and Katherine.

‘I gotta find Les and start selling.’ He took a step backwards and turned away, almost out of the alley by the time Jack replied.

‘This isn’t over, Dave.’

Tears sprang into his eyes again and he took in a deep breath to try to get rid of them. He knew Jack was right.


End file.
